“I was too shy to play or to sing in front of him, at least at first. He was a very kind man, but he would quickly point out if I had missed a line, or pointed at the wrong image on the phad. I learned the epic line by line, and knew it in its entirety by the time I was sixteen. I also knew where every incident was located on the phad.
“The phad is very complex, but if you learn very young, the complexity does not become a burden: instead you learn to appreciate how wonderful and abundant and full of life it is. I love the richness of it, and a good audience appreciates the complexity too. Having so many different layers gives pleasure to the audience. But if you leave learning it too late, you may never remember it properly, and eventually give it up. Luckily, I taught Shrawan the same way my father taught me, and now Shrawan knows the phad nearly as well as I do.
“I got married at the age of sixteen. But I didn’t start reciting the epic professionally until I was twenty, because my wife was only nine when we got married. Batasi was of course then too young to perform with me, so I had to wait until she grew up and learned the epic. At the age of twelve she was brought to my house, and from that point I kept us both busy by becoming her teacher. Although her father was also a bhopa, she didn’t come with much knowledge of the phad from her parents: she had learned only a little from her mother, along with some bhajans. So every morning, early on, I would sing to her and she would follow me, repeating the same stanza, just as we do at a performance. She picked it up very fast, and within three years she was able to sing while I played the ravanhatta for her.
“In our community, we marry young. The choice of a wife is a great gamble, because at nine you can’t really tell whether a woman can sing or not, yet this woman will have to be your professional partner in the reading of the phad, as well as your wife. A man cannot recite Pabuji’s epic on his own. He needs his wife to support him, or else people will not enjoy and appreciate the performance, however good he is. My father was very lucky: my mother was a great singer and had a wonderful voice. Few women could sing as high as her, or maintain such a pitch for a long period. I was also very lucky: Batasi also had a very nice voice, though to be honest she is not quite the equal of my mother.
“As with so much in a man’s life, the choice of a wife is all. Performing together gives a great opportunity for a couple to come together. We actually get into a competition as to who sings better, or picks up the transitions more cleanly. That game goes on all night, and brings love between us.
“Sadly my eldest son has not been so lucky. He wanted to become a bhopa but his wife turned out to be completely tone deaf, so he has had to become a manual labourer: he now works building roads. He only sings occasionally in hotels for a little extra money. There is no question that if his wife could sing, he would now be reading the phad, and probably earning better money. But there is nothing to be done.
“By the time I was twenty, my father’s fame was such that it was easy for me to find work. People assumed that I would inherit something of my father’s talents. But there were drawbacks too. When I first began to perform, everyone wanted to hear my father rather than me. Even if he was just listening in the audience, and I was performing with Batasi, still my father would be made to come up and sing a few songs. He had a wonderful voice, and I can’t even begin to equal him; but I do think I have become the better ravanhatta player. His had only two tuning pegs and just look at the number of keys on mine!
“It is very rare that the whole phad is sung these days. People want to hear individual episodes, and you can sing them in whatever order you like. But it is good to have continuity in the episodes, and you have to learn to get the timing right: certain episodes should only be sung at certain hours of the night: for example the episode of Pabuji’s marriage should always come at midnight, if at all possible.
“We Nayaks are from a very low caste. At some point in our history we became nomads, and so fell from the high position we once had: people never trust nomads. Still to this day we cannot eat or drink in the house of many of the people in this village. But when we recite or perform as bhopas, this brings us respect. I may not sit at the same level as the Rajputs or the Brahmins, but they come to see me here, they commission me to read the phad for them and they are happy and proud about my success and my fame in the villages nearby. They tell everyone that in Pabusar we have the best and most powerful bhopa in all the Shekhawati.
“Although it is our singing and performance that people talk most about, sometimes I think it is our healing powers that people are most grateful for. My father in particular found that reading the phad of Pabuji gave him the gifts of prophecy and healing. There was one case when a boy was bitten by a cobra. My father was fifteen miles from where this took place, but he had an insight that something had happened and he immediately stopped what he was doing, and set out in the midday sun to walk to that village.